Ferro Armor: The Myth, The Legend, The Unfortunate Mathematics

LocationUnited States, D.C. (no it's technically not part of any state)

Posted 05 November 2012 - 02:57 AM

Okay, let's keep this simple, so we will use two easy, easy examples, the lightest and the heaviest mechs in the game:

Commando: His armor weighs 6.5 tons with standard armor. With Ferro you save a -huge- 12% of that weight, so you save 0.78 tons by having Ferro armor. It eats almost half your structure points. Hmm.

Atlas: Let's throw this big monster's armor even above what he has, let's say 640. This means his armor weighs 20 tons as standard armor, meaning that you save 2.4 tons with Ferro Armor, and again it eats almost half of your structure points. Endo-steel eats the same amount of structure points, however due to the weight difference in his potential structure (100 tons) and his armor, you gain far more tonnage for the same cost in structure points.

Endo-Steel's reduction is based off of the mechs potential structure, meaning potential max weight of the mech in question, which means that, across the board, the mathematics result in the same... Endo-steel will almost invariably result in near double the tons gained, for the same critical spaces.

Now, let us clear up the one, simple, myth that seems to surround Ferro armor. It... does...not...give...you...more...armor. Nor does it negate any more damage than standard armor. However you -do- have to pay for it's repair even if it gets scratched, unlike Endo-steel wherein you only pay if you lose a limb or take an unfortunate crit. Yes, it is worded funny, however if you actually read the specifics on how it is written, and test it out a bit, it will make a tad more sense.

The ultimate conclusion is that Ferro Armor is there for flash, and Endosteel is invariably worth more bang for your buck.

If you feel the need to burn tons and tons of cash!
At first you get your FF, then the ES. then you try to fit in your other-then-atlas mech some waepons, what will be hard.
Then you start a game and SURPRISINGLY loose.

it's not worthless. if you still have 14 crits after ES & whichever heatsink option you're going with, it is useful. i use it in my jenner

Indeed, I have a XL300 drive, Ferro-fibrous, Endo-steel and double-heatsinks on my Jenner-D and it rocks!
Sure, repair costs are high, but it gives you that much of an edge, so you earn more money and are less likely to die. <3

I'll agree that armour limitations per location should be tonnage based, rather than unit based, though. Lighter armour should mean that you can slap more of that derp onto your mech!

LocationUnited States, D.C. (no it's technically not part of any state)

Posted 05 November 2012 - 07:03 AM

Naros, on 05 November 2012 - 06:48 AM, said:

Indeed, I have a XL300 drive, Ferro-fibrous, Endo-steel and double-heatsinks on my Jenner-D and it rocks!
Sure, repair costs are high, but it gives you that much of an edge, so you earn more money and are less likely to die. <3

I'll agree that armour limitations per location should be tonnage based, rather than unit based, though. Lighter armour should mean that you can slap more of that derp onto your mech!

If that were the case, if the armor points were indeed tonnage based, and you could outfit yourself with 12% more armor, it -would- indeed be useful for light mechs, and some medium mechs... however, as it stands, it still remains basically useless.

Are you serious? 12% extra is 12% extra. The more armour a mech has, the greater the amount of armour this bonus would grant.
And the larger the mech, the greater the amount of armour they generally have.

Your tone is not appreciated. Your claims that X is worthless, and that there is no reason to use Y on Z, because you say so, without anything to back it up is just rude and pointless.

Utilizing a weave of ferro-steel, ferro-titanium, and diamond weave fibers which boosts the tensile strength of the plating, it provides more protection per ton than standard armor (12% for FF, 20% for Clan FF), but takes up more space on the 'Mech or vehicle. (14 critical slots for inner sphere, 7 for clan on mechs. Two slots for inner sphere vehicles, one on clan.) The maximum amount of protection is not changed; merely the weight of armor required to achieve that level of protection. For a unit which already has maximum armor protection, it is therefore considered a weight-saving measure, at the cost of critical space.

exactly, it does not give you more armor point. Those remain the same. So if you get 84 points for your center torso with standard armor, you only still get 84 points with FF. It is only reducing the weight of you the armor that you are using freeing up tonage and using critical spots to equip it.

Most lighter mechs don't use too many critical spaces. My Jenner, currently lacking high tech components, has 41 critical spaces open. It can use 28 on FF and Endo and still have more open spaces than it can afford to fill. Burning a bunch of those unused spaces to save half a ton is basically a "free" power up in terms of design constraints, albeit a pretty small one. I wouldn't mind a bonus half ton of stuff. So the only question is whether or not you want to make the most powerful mech for your chassis with expensive weight saving techs and better gear, or the most profitable one with much lower repair costs.

Granted, in an absolute sense, freeing up a half ton in MWO is much less useful than the same half ton in an open system, since you're limited by hardpoints. In a pure custom design, you could fit an extra small laser to have 7 instead of 6. In MWO, many mech designs will already be at their hardpoint limit for their primary weapons systems. But being able to add a jump jet, better engine, upgrade a gun, etc are still pretty nice things.

Heavier mechs can save more absolute tons with various weight saving technologies. However, they also fit more and bigger weapons, so their crit spaces are far more valuable. Hence you have to be much more choosy about which ones you actually use. FF armor directly competes with Endo (or even just raw space) here, and loses.

Finally, FF was mostly a Clan upgrade. Clanners got 20% more armor instead of 12 so just the armor was more competitive against Endo. They also spend only 7 crits for their armor or structure upgrades, so more of their mechs could use both. If Inner Sphere FF armor kind of sucks, it's nothing new.

Ferro does give me more "armor" but not from the Ferro Fibrous itself. With Ferro Fibrous I was able to completely maximize my Centurions armor. Without Ferro it'd be sitting at roughly standard levels of armor. So while the armor itself absorbs no more damage then regular armor it gives me the added bonus of being lighter, therefore I can actually have more armor on my mech.

I have both Endo and Ferro on a Cicada, only on one out of the three I have though. It just happened that I had an extra 14 Critical spots left after I built the mech, so I threw the FF in it and added a few more points of armor to the mech. Is it always useful, no but why does it have be? It does have a use in some situations but for saving weight Endo is always going to be better it was designed this way for a reason.